Software applications in the field of enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) attempt to integrate all facets of a business including planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. As the ERP methodology has become more popular, software applications have emerged to help business managers implement ERP in business activities such as inventory control, order tracking, customer service, finance and human resources. However, the increase in the popularity of ERP systems has also led to an increase in their general level of complexity. One of the natural consequences of this increased complexity is the introduction of unforeseen incompatibilities and errors due to integration problems amongst the different software modules and components.
In a traditional ERP environment, with the exception of reporting the error to a user or an administrator, a server that encounters an error has no way of handling, or otherwise acting upon, the error. Traditionally, the only corrective action possible is for an administrator to correct the error by, for example, changing the code of the application or transaction script that caused the error. However, correcting one application provides only a limited solution to a potentially larger problem. For example, if other related applications create the same or a similar error when executed, an administrator must correct each individual application in order to solve the problem.
Furthermore, in a traditional ERP environment, there is limited opportunity for the administrator, who fixes the problem, to share his knowledge of the problem with other administrators in the organization. For example, if an organization has several departments each with its own administrator, an administrator that corrects an error in an application in one department will, more than likely, not identify the problem and provide a solution to the administrators in the other departments. Consequently, if an administrator in another department encounters the same or a similar problem, that administrator will have to come up with a solution, which may or may not be the same solution used by the first administrator.